By MATT PIKE
Former Missouri Western State University women's basketball head coach Candi Whitaker is returning to the place where her head coaching career began, hired as 11th head coach in UMKC women's program history.
Whitaker returns to UMKC, where she previously served as the seventh head coach in program history for the Roos from 2006 to 2012, after two years as an assistant coach for the program. Whitaker tallied 77 wins in her first six seasons with the Roos, the third most for a head coach in school history at the Division I level.
"It is a tremendous honor to once again have the opportunity to take over the program here at Kansas City. This place means so much to me. It's where I got my first head coaching job at twenty-six and where Matt and I started our family," Whitaker said in a news release from UMKC. "In many ways, it shaped me for all that would lie ahead on my coaching journey. I could not be more excited to be back and to get to work to elevate this program once again."
After leaving UMKC, Whitaker was the head coach at Texas Tech from 2013-2018 before she returned to Missouri, and coached at MoWest for five years with the Griffons. Whitaker led the Griffons to four 20-plus win seasons, building up a .680 winning percentage across her five years in St. Joseph. Whitaker led MoWest to the Elite Eight in 2022, pulling off three straight victories over higher-seeded opponents to pull the Griffons to their best postseason finish since 1995.
Whitaker was most recently the head coach at North Alabama, where she spent the last two seasons. In this past season, Whitaker led the Lions to a 17-14 overall record and went 11-7 in ASUN play, the program's best finish since 2019-20. Following the 2025-26 campaign, Whitaker has amassed a career coaching record of 261-253, just recently completing her 18th season as a head coach.
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